The Caves of Steel
1953
- robots
- fiction
- fiction, science fiction, hard science fiction
- fiction, mystery & detective, general
- interplanetary voyages
- murder
- american literature
- american science fiction
- science fiction
- overpopulation
The story
In the future you will walk down the crowded streets of New York City not knowing if the bodies brushing past you are humans or androids. With tensions already mounting between humans and robots, the murder of a Spacer must be handled in a politically-correct fashion so Detective Elijah Baley is assigned a robot partner. Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw become like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Law & Order s Detectives Lennie Brisco and Ed Green, and Training Day s Detective Alonzo Harris and Officer Jake Hoyt disparate partners who must work together to solve a crime. The only problem is, Baley doesn't trust anyone not his boss, not his wife, and certainly not his robot partner.
What it’s like
Cramped, dim and overbuilt: the city of the book is a vertical warren of domed streets, enclosed walkways and stacked apartment blocks, where artificial light and recycled air replace weather and sky. Asimov's prose is plain, clipped and procedural, with long stretches of Elijah Baley walking, riding, questioning and brooding in close third person, and the sensory world comes through in crowd noise, stale air and the claustrophobia of being always indoors. The mood is paranoid and wary rather than frightening, a slow-burning cold-case unease with a low undercurrent of suspicion toward machines. Its pace is steady and talky, built from interviews and quiet deductions rather than action, and its emotional arc follows a suspicious, rigid man slowly and grudgingly learning to trust an unexpected partner. Violence is limited to an offscreen murder and a few tense confrontations, with no gore and little sexual content, though the social prejudice and fear it depicts can feel sharp. It suits a rainy weekend read, a patient mystery fan, or readers who enjoy thoughtful, dated-futurist science fiction over spectacle.
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